At Canada's largest Atlantic puffin colony, chicks are dying of starvation

CBC
Sun, October 1, 2023 

A puffin pokes its head out of its nest in Elliston. (Submitted by Mark Gray - image credit)

The volunteers who rescue Atlantic puffin chicks — called "pufflings" — knew something was wrong when so few strays from the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula showed up this summer.

The fledglings emerge from their burrow at night to avoid predators, but some are attracted to the lights in the rapidly growing communities on shore. Members of a group called the Puffin Patrol capture the stranded pufflings and release them into the ocean.

"The Puffin Patrol wasn't finding very many birds," said Sabina Wilhelm, a wildlife biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

"And the birds that were being found were actually very small in body weight."

Some were less than half the normal size for puffins their age.

After searching a sampling of nests on the ecological reserve where Atlantic puffins congregate to breed each spring, Wilhelm and her colleagues discovered that many chicks had perished.

The grim discovery connects the fate of the Atlantic puffin — which is not only the official bird of Newfoundland and Labrador, but a ubiquitous image in the province — with serious problems in ocean ecology, including warming ocean temperatures and a struggling, complex food web.

Sabina Wilhelm and her colleagues were alarmed that the Puffin Patrol wasn't seeing very many birds this year, so they went searching for them, finding many birds.

Sabina Wilhelm and her colleagues were alarmed that the Puffin Patrol wasn't seeing very many birds this year, so they went searching for them, finding many birds. (Submitted by Sabina Wilhelm)

'They died of starvation'

Tests ruled out avian flu, which caused a massive die-off of birds in 2022.

"Just based on the the body mass and just picking up the dead chicks, that were just skin and bones, so essentially they died of starvation."

Adult puffins dive for food such as capelin, a forage fish that can make up as much as 50 per cent of their diet, and bring it back to the nest, a burrow in the cliffs.

But when food is scarce the adults feed themselves, and the chick is left to starve.

Another anomaly is that puffins bred later this year, said Wilhelm.

"Normally they start fledging in early August and by the end of August, early September, most of them are gone," she said.

"There seems to have been this mismatch between breeding activity and the fact that capelin kind of disappeared.… Other years there might have still been a lot of capelin in August. That just didn't happen this year."

Warmer ocean temperatures also work against Atlantic puffins, who can dive to a depth of only 50 metres to catch capelin and other forage fish such as sandlance and herring.

Wildlife biologist Sabina Wilhelm weighs and measures puffin chicks, or pufflings, who were found dead in their nests, having starved to death because capelin, their main food source, was not available this summer. Many of those gathered for testing were less than half their normal size.

Wildlife biologist Sabina Wilhelm weighs and measures puffin chicks, or pufflings, who were found dead in their nests, having starved to death because capelin, their main food source, was not available this summer. Many of those gathered for testing were less than half their normal size. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC)

"So if the fish are moving downwards into the water column because the waters are warmer, then suddenly … they're not accessible to the puffins anymore because they can't dive that deep," said Wilhelm.

With more than 300,000 nesting pairs breeding at the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, the Atlantic puffin population is robust overall, said Wilhelm.

Because they live well into their 20s, losing their offspring in one year does not spell disaster for the species. But the starvation of so many Atlantic chicks this year is a concern, said Wilhelm.

When tour boat operator Joe O'Brien noticed dead chicks floating on the water, he alerted Wilhelm and her colleagues.

O'Brien, a former fisherman, has been bringing tourists to the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve for 39 summers.

With so many species, from cod to seabirds to whales, relying on capelin for their survival, O'Brien says it's time for a new approach to managing this fishery.

"Should we be harvesting capelin at all?" asked O'Brien.

"Shouldn't that be a sign to to management that we should change our philosophy respecting the ocean?"

A dead Atlantic puffin chick floats in the water off Bird Island in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, Canada's largest Atlantic puffin colony. Some 300,000 nesting pairs return to the reserve every year to breed.

A dead Atlantic puffin chick floats in the water off Bird Island in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, Canada's largest Atlantic puffin colony. Some 300,000 nesting pairs return to the reserve every year to breed. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC)

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans categorizes the capelin stock as "critical," yet it allowed a commercial fishery of 14,533 tonnes in 2023 for the second year in a row.

In its capelin management plan, DFO said, "Science shows the fishery's impact on capelin is small compared to predation by other species such as seabirds, cod and other fish."

Capelin are caught using a purse seine, which surrounds the fish, corralling them into the net and tightening it, similar to a drawstring, before it's hauled aboard a fishing vessel.

However, the species is a mere fraction of its abundance in the 1980s. As the principal food for cod, capelin overfishing is recognized as one of the key factors in the collapse of northern cod stocks more than three decades ago.

Valued for its eggs, or roe, female capelin is exported to China, the United States, Taiwan and Japan,

In the 2023 season, capelin sold for an average of 16 cents a pound, netting $4.5 million to fishermen in landed value, making it one of the least lucrative fisheries in the province.

"We're destroying them in mass volumes … only taking the females.… That's crazy," said O'Brien.

Tour boat operator Joe O'Brien noticed dead puffins floating on the water this summer near the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, 30 kilometres south of St. John's.

Tour boat operator Joe O'Brien noticed dead puffins floating on the water this summer near the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, 30 kilometres south of St. John's. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC)

"Why are we catching one of the main sources of food for just about everything in the water?"

Capelin fishery 'incomprehensible'

Ian Jones, a marine bird biologist at Memorial University, is also concerned about the impact fishing capelin has on the entire ecosystem.

"When I hear these claims that somehow you can keep fishing a forage fish like this … it's incomprehensible to me," he said, adding that the fisheries "arguably don't bring in a whole lot of money."

The effects of fishing a forage species, a rapidly warming ocean due to climate change, increasing amounts of artificial light, seabird hunting and monofilament fishing nets are cumulatively stacked against seabirds' long-term survival, said Jones.

While Atlantic puffins can sustain some mortality because of their abundance, the Leach's storm petrel has seen a decline of about 50 per cent in recent years, said Jones.

"We haven't seen a bird disappearing at this rate since the passenger pigeon," said Jones.

Like the Atlantic puffin, the Leach's storm petrel is also affected by a growing amount of artificial light from communities, boats and offshore oil installations.

Wildlife biologists checked some burrows where Atlantic puffins nest and found a large number of pufflings dead in their nest from starvation. Adult puffins will feed themselves first, and the scarcity of capelin, a forage species of fish, meant there was not enough food to take back to the nest to feed their chicks. Capelin make up to 50 per cent of their diet.More

Wildlife biologists checked some burrows where Atlantic puffins nest and found a large number of pufflings dead in their nest from starvation. Adult puffins will feed themselves first, and the scarcity of capelin, a forage species of fish, meant there was not enough food to take back to the nest to feed their chicks. Capelin make up to 50 per cent of their diet. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC)

"These seabirds that have evolved to survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth are faced with this completely disorientating artificial light," said Jones. "They don't successfully get out to sea so they basically strand on land and and die in very large numbers."

'Canary in the coalmine'

The United Nations calls light pollution "a significant and growing threat to wildlife" that contributes to the death of millions of birds globally.

Seabirds that migrate at night and go off course chasing artificial light are at risk of becoming exhausted, being eaten by predators, or colliding with buildings.

The impact of warming ocean temperatures is already being found in other Atlantic puffin populations.

"The worry is, is that these puffins are going to experience the same fate here in Newfoundland that they're experiencing in the Eastern Atlantic," said Jones, "with year after year of no chick surviving, the population begins to crash and then in some areas disappear."

Seabirds are a great indicator of the health of the ecosystem, says Wilhelm, and O'Brien says the puffin is warning us the ocean is under stress from climate change.

"The puffin is acting like the canary in the coal mine."

NB
Atlantic puffin returns to open water after 'miracle' rescue


Wed, March 8, 2023 

This young Atlantic puffin was released into the water off the New Brunswick coast just days after it was found in the middle of a busy road in Riverview. (Atlantic Wildlife Institute/Facebook - image credit)

The tiny Atlantic puffin rescued from a busy four-lane road in southeastern New Brunswick last Thursday has already been released into open water after a short recovery at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute.

Pam Novak of the Atlantic Wildlife Institute said that when the email came in about a tiny bird in Riverview that had clearly lost its way, she thought it was a typo, and the sender meant pigeon — not puffin.

"Luckily, it was found as quickly as it was," she said. "For the gentleman who found him to find him so quickly before it actually got hit by a car is what the miracle of this is — that that bird didn't get injured."

Weighing in at just 400 grams, Novak and her team did some research and concluded the Atlantic puffin was likely a juvenile, going into its second year. It's plumage is dull, and the bill itself didn't have the iconic orange and yellow colours yet.

Submitted by Pam Novak

After an exam, a few days of rest, and a bathtub swimming test, Novak knew the puffin was ready to be released into open water.

"We have a little pool set up to make sure that we can see that activity happening and he passed that test," she said. "Then it was a matter of getting him back out."

When it came time for the release, the bird "was very happy to go," she said as she laughed. "No looking back."

The wildlife care team determined the bird was most likely on its way to Grand Manan or nearby Machias Seal Island, and drove the Atlantic puffin down the Bay of Fundy coast to find open water and a direct route to the breeding grounds.

"The consensus was that it's probably trying to get down to Machias Seal Island, so that's where we put it … and shortened his or her trek to get right to the island."

LISTEN | Pam Novak tells Information Morning Moncton about how a rescued puffin has been returned to the wild:

Novak suspects the lonely puffin may had become disoriented by fog that moved in that morning. It was also a "pretty breezy, snowy kind of day."

While there is no way to know whether the bird will survive, Novak is hopeful.

Atlantic Wildlife Institute/Facebook

"A lot of times you're not going to know what's going to happen. All we can do is put a bird out that we felt was in good healthy condition, didn't show any kind of ailments, just got itself put off track for whatever reason and just give them that second chance."

The last time Novak saw the bird, it was in deep open water — a quiet place she describes as the best spot it could be.

"Last we saw it was diving underwater and it took off and that was that," she said. "So that's all we can ask for."

Arctic puffins evolved into a new species 6 generations ago, but they might be less fit to survive, a new study shows

Maiya Focht
Updated Mon, October 9, 2023 

Puffins beak changes color depending on the time of year.

Annemarie Loof

Scientists analyzed Atlantic puffin genes and found they had been interbreeding in recent history.


They traced the first hybrid puffin back to 1910, after climate change had started to grip the globe.


That suggests that the interbreeding was caused by climate change.

They're small, they're cute, and they're evolving right before our eyes — a hybrid species of Atlantic puffins that formed in the last century was recently discovered by scientists.

The hybrid group formed when two of three subspecies of Atlantic puffins began mating six generations ago, around 1910, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.

It probably began happening when climate change affected one of the subspecies' habitats, sending them to mingle with another group, the study detailed.
Different subspecies of Atlantic puffin look very similar.Annemarie LoofAtlantic puffins' evolution isn't necessarily for the better

The authors also found that all three subspecies of puffin that live around the Atlantic Ocean have been losing genetic diversity over the past century.

This could make them less fit to survive in the future, Oliver Kersten, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oslo who led the research, told Insider.

Decreased genetic diversity can harm sperm quality across a population, decrease birth rates, and make the organisms within a group more susceptible to disease and parasites, according to multiple studies. All of these factors can make a group less resilient to climate change, and more likely to face extinction.

It's important to study the genetic changes happening in puffins right now so we can best plan for how to protect, "such an iconic species," Kersten said.
A pair of puffins in the Farne Islands near Northumberland, UK.Evie Easterbrook/Wildlife Photographer of the YearA genetic map for Atlantic puffins

Other species in the Arctic have hybridized, like the beluga whale and polar bear, but this is the first time that scientists have been able to track how an Arctic species' genes have changed over time because of hybridization, Kersten said.

Without genetics, researchers might never know how puffins are changing in response to their unique environment since the different subspecies look very similar, Kersten said.

But genes don't lie. When you compare the genetics of the two subspecies to their new offspring, you get a map of how the hybrid species formed, and how they're currently living.
The Atlantic puffin was broken up into three distinct subspecies nearly 40,000 years ago.Annemarie LoofFrom 40,000 years ago to the 20th century

What their analysis found is that the original three subspecies began diverging from one another roughly 40,000 years ago. That likely corresponds to the breakup of an ancient glacier over the Arctic, Kersten told Insider.

The break up of the glacier put the different puffin populations onto different islands around the Atlantic, where they could evolve independently.

One group settled the north of the Arctic (F. a. naumanni), one group landed on the coastlines of what would become the United Kingdom (F. a. grabae), and the other (F. a. arctica), picked the south of the Arctic.

Fast forward to 1910, more than 100 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began releasing greenhouse gases into the air at a never-before-seen rate. The scientists found that this is when some of the northern Arctic colonies moved south, meeting at Bear Island (Bjørnøya) in Norway.

Kersten and his colleagues hypothesize that this happened because climate change made the northern habitat unsuitable for puffins. It could've been a disruption to the food chain from overfishing, a change in water temperature, or any number of human-related effects on the Arctic, that made them want to leave.

Studying these animals may help us understand how our actions may be affecting them, Kersten said. He hopes that his work makes people understand that their actions have effects for the Arctic in general, and for the puffin in specific.

Puffins scratch their itches with sticks in first example of seabirds using tools
Scottie Andrew

CNN

Published Friday, January 3, 2020 

Puffins caught using 'tools' to scratch itch


Surveillance video of an Atlantic puffin suggests the species may be smarter than we thought.Perhaps puffins aren't as bird-brained as previously believed.

A team of animal experts observed two Atlantic puffins, more than 1,500 kilometres apart, spontaneously scratching themselves with sticks -- the first time wild seabirds have been spotted using tools, according to new findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It's exciting for a few reasons, author Annette Fayet said: It could mean wild birds are capable of using tools and have a reason to use them. Animals who use tools typically have higher cognitive abilities.

Related Stories
Puffins fill up nesting islands this year despite challenges
Mass puffin die-off linked to climate change, researchers say
Study sheds light on little-known migration habits of iconic Atlantic puffin

What's more, the birds exhibited the same behavior on different islands -- so while it may be rare for the swollen-chested birds to scratch themselves with branches, the behavior isn't restricted to a single population.

"Seabirds' physical cognition may have been underestimated," the authors wrote.

An itch their beaks couldn't scratch

Researchers observed two puffins -- one in Wales, one on an Icelandic island (where researchers planted a camera) -- using a stick to scratch themselves.

In footage from Iceland, a puffin toddles toward the camera, picks up a stick in its beak, then reaches under its chest to scratch itself with the tiny branch.

The authors aren't sure just why the puffins picked up sticks, though they assume it needed to knock off seabird ticks that plague coastal populations. Perhaps the branch was a more effective removal method than its beak.

Stick scratching is the second type of tool use in birds

The study rules out any doubt that the birds were merely building nests -- puffins are particular, and prefer lining their burrows with softer materials, like grass and feathers. The footage shows the puffin in Iceland collecting both.

The stick it used to scratch its chest, meanwhile, remains on the grass, right where the puffin dropped it.

Animals use tools for a few reasons, researchers noted, mainly to feed. It's not uncommon for some creatures to maintain themselves using tools, like chimpanzees that groom or wipe themselves with natural objects and captive parrots that scratch with sticks.

The puffins' scratching is only the second type of tool use related to body care spotted in wild birds -- the first is "anting," when birds smear ants all over their plumage to fight parasites.

"Our observations alone cannot solve the puzzle of the evolution of animal tool use," Fayet told CNN. "Many more species may also be using tools, but we simply haven't observed them yet."

---30---

Puffin Dance

Now that the Liberals have adopted the Puffin as their official mascot their Great Leader does the Puffin Dance.



After all the Puffin is known as the "clown of the sea,"

Yes, yes I know this photo is already controversial.

However to be fair and balanced here are some more goofy politician photo's.





















I guess that was Day doing his

Stanfield imitation.





















And of course who can ever forget this.
The Queen of the BBQ circuit
before he became King.





















Apparently it's a Liberal Leader tradition
to also be the Minister of Dance.
Pierre does the pirouette.












H/T to Engaged Spectator.



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Liberal Party Song

Along with their new official mascot and dance the Liberal Party could adopt this as their anthem.

The Puffin Song

Copyright 1990 by Tom Knight

I'm not like the penguin, don't confuse me with ducks

I'm dressed for dinner in my finest fancy tux

My beak it is pretty, my feathers are fine

Long time ago, the hunters wanted mine

Call me a Puffin, 'cuz that's my name

I live on an island just off the coast of Maine

But I wasn't born here, I was brought by a man

And now my burrow is here on Egg Rock Island

Chorus:

Come fly with me

Fly across the sea

Come fly with me

Puffins we will be

My brothers and sisters, my lovely wife

We like to gather, we love the social life

A picnic for puffins, a tasty old treat

I hope you like fish, it's our favorite thing to eat (Chorus)

And here is an exercise they could try at their next caucus meeting.

An original dramatic action song – “Underwater World” – proved the perfect
opportunity for all age groups to work together.

" For a Puffin likes nuthin',
more than tasty fish,
And a beak thats full for stuffin',
is every Puffin's wish."

The value of this sharing was soon apparent. The children
worked in mixed age groups and the P3 seaweeds (7-8 year olds) were
soon swaying as gracefully as the P7 ones (11-12 year olds). The P1 shoals
of fish (5-6 year olds) were shown how to twist and wriggle by their older
brothers and sisters, and the young puffins took no time at all to copy the
older ones in tossing sandeels in their beaks, while waddling around the
stage! There was a great sense of togetherness and of each individual
contribution being an important part of the whole

For their next convention they could invite the Puffins to play.

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Decline in North Sea puffins causes concern



nIn both places, a census is taking place to determine the extent of the decline, which has been blamed on rising sea temperatures and other environmental factors (AFP/Andy Buchanan)

Stuart GRAHAM
Sat, May 28, 2022


The Isle of May, off Scotland's east coast, is home to one of the UK's biggest colonies of seabirds. Some 200,000 birds, from kittiwakes to guillemots can flock to the rocky outcrop at the height of the breeding season.

But conservationists are concerned about dwindling numbers of one of the island's most distinctive visitors -- the Atlantic puffin.

"The population was really booming in the 80s and 90s and then suddenly, a crash," David Steel, a manager at the nature reserve, told AFP.

"We lost nearly 30 percent of all puffins in the mid-2000s and since then the population has slowly increased but nothing compared to what it used to be."


Just over 50 miles (80 kilometres) down the coast on the Farne Islands, off Northumberland in northeast England, there are similar concerns.

In both places, global warming, high winds, rains, coastal erosion, pollution and overfishing of its favoured food -- sand eels -- is being blamed for dwindling numbers.

"Climate change is having a big effect with prey items in the sea," affecting sand eels which feed on plankton in the North Sea, said Steel.

"The plankton is moving north as the sea temperature increases. So if there are less sand eels the puffins are going to struggle."

- Census -

On a meadow on one of the Farne Islands, rangers slowly slide their arms into narrow sandy burrows, searching for signs of nesting pairs of puffins, which are known locally as "tommy noddies".

"Quite often you will get a bit of a nip, which is a good sign because it means then that the burrow is occupied," said one of the rangers, Rosie Parsons.

In 2015, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature gave puffins "vulnerable" status, after large declines over much of their European range.

Rising sea temperatures have caused sand eels to move north to cooler waters, forcing the birds to follow but where more extreme weather can be fatal for them.

The traditional enemies of puffins, which grow to just under 30 centimetres (one foot) tall and weigh around 450 grams (around a pound), are seagulls and seals.

Puffins mate for life and lay a single egg in April or May.

Due to their low reproductive rate, populations can take decades to recover from a sudden knock.

A full puffin census is being carried out on the Farne Islands and the Isle of May this year.

Concerns were raised last year when a limited count recorded 36,211 breeding pairs across four of the Farne Islands compared to 42,474 pairs in 2018.

Puffin numbers on the islands peaked at 55,674 pairs in 2003 before a sudden crash to 36,835 in 2008 a due to an extremely low number of sand eels.

Zoologist Richard Bevan, from Newcastle University, hopes the resumed annual count will provide a more accurate estimate of puffins on the islands.

"Up until 2018 surveys were done on the Farnes every five years, which means you don't know what's happening in the four years in between," he told AFP.

Before 2018, teams of researchers would check every burrow they came across on an island and form an estimate from that.

The university then found a way to subsample to form an accurate estimate of the population. This has sped up the count and made the task far less arduous.

- Concern -

Measuring puffin numbers is difficult, said Bevan.

Sometimes it will be easy to spot one of the birds, returning to nests with a sand eel clamped in its beak, but puffins are often underground.

"Often the only way to do it is to stick your arm into a burrow and check," he said.

The 2022 census will give scientists a picture of how the puffin population is being affected by factors such as climate change and local changes in sand eel availability, Bevan says.

"Looking at the data, it is worrying to see that over the last four years we have seen a downward trend," he says.

"However, these are data for a short time period and compared to the population counts in the early 1990s they are still reasonable numbers."

Although there is not an immediate danger of the puffins becoming extinct, the fact that their numbers are falling "triggers concern".

"With a declining population you have to keep your eye on it to make sure that doesn't continue," he said.

"If it does continue we have to be aware of the factors that contribute to it and how we can ameliorate those."

srg/phz/cjo/ach

Liberal Flap

Dion expected to shake up party

Yep, he is going to make them all wear Puffin suits.



SEE:

Liberal Party Song

Puffin Dance

Huffin and Puffin

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Huffin and Puffin

This is too silly by half. However it should be noted that the Liberal Party of Canada hides it's excrement too, but not well enough as the Gomery Commission proved.

And is flapping ones wings very hard, puffins flap their wings a hundred times to get going, a backhanded comment on Dion's Leadership?

Canadian political parties might not have official birds just yet, but deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has a suggestion for his party -- the humble Atlantic puffin.

"They put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement ... They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell," he told reporters at the annual summer caucus gathering in St. John's, Nfld.

"This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be."

Liberals embrace Family Values....

And like a true politician, Mr. Ignatieff praised puffins for their "good family values." "They stay together for 30 years," he said.

Unlike Emperor Penguins who were embraced by the social conservatives for their family values until someone pointed out that they also have shown homosexual and polygamous tendencies.

When dealing with fowling ones image one should be careful of not appearing bird brained.

"My wife and I were very impressed with the noble bird. Noble in my lexicon means underappreciated as well."

Noble ah yes Mssr. Ignatieff does come from a Russian Aristocratic family after all, so I guess he can appreciate nobility and being in Dion's cabinet I guess he also understands being underappreciated.



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Nothing funny about bad year for Maine’s clownish puffins
By PATRICK WHITTLE


FILE - In this July 1, 2013, file photo, a puffin prepares to land with a bill full of fish on Eastern Egg Rock off the Maine coast. This year's warm summer was bad for Maine's beloved puffins. Far fewer chicks fledged than need to to stabilize the population.

 (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)


PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s beloved puffins suffered one of their worst years for reproduction in decades this summer due to a lack of the small fish they eat.

Puffins are seabirds with colorful beaks that nest on four small islands off the coast of Maine. There are about 1,500 breeding pairs in the state and they are dependent on fish such as herring and sand lance to be able to feed their young.

Only about a quarter of the birds were able to raise chicks this summer, said Don Lyons, director of conservation science for the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute in Bremen, Maine. About two-thirds of the birds succeed in a normal year, he said.

The puffin colonies have suffered only one or two less productive years in the four decades since their populations were restored in Maine, Lyons said. The birds had a poor year because of warm ocean temperatures this summer that reduced the availability of the fish the chicks need to survive, he said.

“There were fewer fish for puffins to catch, and the ones they were able to were not ideal for chicks,” Lyons said. “It’s a severe warning this year.”'

 In this July 19, 2019, file photo, research assistant Andreinna Alvarez, of Ecuador, holds a puffin chick before weighing and banding the bird on Eastern Egg Rock, a small island off the coast of Maine. This year's warm summer was bad for Maine's beloved puffins. Far fewer chicks fledged than need to to stabilize the population.

 (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)

The islands where puffins nest are located in the Gulf of Maine, a body of water that is warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans. Researchers have not seen much mortality of adult puffins, but the population will suffer if the birds continue to have difficulty raising chicks, Lyons said.

The discouraging news comes after positive signs in recent years despite the challenging environmental conditions. The population of the birds, which are on Maine’s state threatened species list, has been stable in recent years.

The birds had one of their most productive seasons for mating pairs in years in 2019. Scientists including Stephen Kress, who has studied the birds for decades, said at the time that birds seemed to be doing well because the Gulf of Maine had a cool year that led to an abundance of food.

The puffins are Atlantic puffins that also live in Canada and the other side of the ocean. Internationally, they’re listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Rudderless Liberals

Well they have a new mascot, a dance and possibly a new party song. That's a start.

Liberals can win the next federal election, but only if they come up with clear policy alternatives, some fresh ideas, new faces and a simple message, the party's pollster said Thursday.

While Canadians still don't trust Harper entirely, MPs said Marzolini told them voters aren't particularly enamoured of the Liberal team or its agenda either.

The problem is their Leader.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, second from right, and his wife, Janine Krieber, relax aboard the tour boat Atlantic Puffin in Bay Bulls, Nfld., August 28, 2007. Dion was gracious and polite, but humour challenged, the Star's Susan Delacourt says.

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Cyclones starve North Atlantic seabirds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CNRS

 

IMAGE: ATLANTIC PUFFIN view more 

CREDIT: © DAVID GRÉMILLET

Every winter, thousands of emaciated seabird carcasses are found on North American and European shores. In an article published on the 13 September in Current Biology, an international team of scientists including the CNRS1 has shown how cyclones are causing the deaths of these birds. The latter are frequently exposed to high-intensity cyclones, which can last several days, when they migrate from their Arctic nesting sites to the North Atlantic further south in order to winter in more favourable conditions. After equipping more than 1,500 birds of the five main species concerned (Atlantic puffins, little auks, black-legged kittiwakes, and two species of guillemots) with small loggers2 and by comparing their movements with the trajectories of cyclones, the scientists were able to determine the degree of exposure of the birds to these weather events. By modeling the energy expenditure of birds under such conditions, the study suggests, surprisingly, that the birds do not die from increased energy expenditure, but as a result of their inability to feed during a cyclone. The species studied are particularly unsuited to fly in high winds and some cannot dive into a stormy sea, preventing them from feeding. Trapped during a cyclone, these birds will starve if the unfavourable conditions persist beyond the few days that their body reserves allow them to survive without food. As the frequency of severe cyclones in the North Atlantic increases with climate change, seabirds wintering in this area will be even more vulnerable to such events.

CAPTION

Flight of a little auk equipped with a GLS system (eastern Greenland).

CREDIT

© David Grémillet

Notes

 

1 – Among those who took part in the study are scientists from the Centre d'écologie fonctionnelle et évolutive (CNRS/Université de Monptellier/IRD/EPHE), the laboratory Littoral, environment et societies (CNRS/La Rochelle Université) and the Centre for biological studies of Chizé (CNRS/La Rochelle Université).

The following major international structures took part (among others): the University of Wisconsin, the Norwegian Polar Institute and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.

2 - GLS (Global Location Sensor) tags are tiny tracking devices weighing around 1g, capable of recording light levels in the vicinity of the bird, allowing the position of the equipped individual to be calculated. Though less accurate (range of about 200 kilometres) than a GPS device, these loggers require little energy and have a long life span. They are placed on the metal rings that scientists put on the birds’ leg.

 

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.059 

ARTICLE TITLE

North Atlantic winter cyclones starve seabirds

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Sep-2021

4 Problems for the Degrowth Movement

Though increasingly influential in activist circles and policy discussions, the degrowth perspective on addressing climate change suffers from serious analytical and political flaws. We need a program of green growth to decarbonize the planet.

By Daniel Driscoll

February 24, 2024

Source: Jacobin

A barn and wind turbines in rural Illinois. (Wikimedia Commons)

Amid the French protests of May 1968, the idea of degrowth was born under the name décroissance. It quickly gained traction in Parisian Marxist circles with work from the likes of Austrian French philosopher André Gorz and others. When in 1972 the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, the term décroissance came to the mainstream.

Today décroissance is having another moment, this time under its English moniker, as degrowth enters both policy circles and popular discourse. It is, however, a distraction for left climate movements, one that we can ill afford when the world has such limited time to decarbonize.

Degrowth provides neither empirically grounded, actionable solutions nor a credible theory of social and political change. It suffers from four big problems.

1. Degrowth often confuses correlation for causation and overextrapolates from the past.

The strength of the degrowth movement comes from accurately recounting how wealthy countries developed through the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels and economies coevolved together: coal powered the earliest factories in the Industrial Revolution. Electricity then lit, connected, and expanded cities around the world. Oil and gas knit the post–World War II world economy together.

Economic growth, then, went hand in hand with the growth of emissions. The degrowth movement argues that while switching to green growth may be theoretically possible, sufficiently rapid decarbonization requires degrowth.

The focus on growth, however, may lead to confusing correlation for causation, and at worst distorting our policy priorities. Therefore, an elementary reminder is in order: carbon emissions come from burning carbon — they are CO2 emissions, not GDP emissions. To decarbonize, we need to replace carbon energy sources with clean energy, and repressing growth will not solve the problem of financing electrification and energy-input replacement.

This point may seem obvious, but many people seem to forget it and focus too narrowly on economic growth and GDP (which is of course a controversial indicator of well-being). Growth is contingent upon energy input, but that energy does not need to come from carbon. Those who argue that decoupling emissions from GDP cannot happen fast enough are extrapolating from the historic association of emissions and growth. If historical trends routinely and straightforwardly predicted our economic future, then much of the risk that we know to be endemic to the stock market and the financial sector would not exist, as the past would be a sure guide to what’s coming next.

2. Degrowth doesn’t acknowledge that redistribution can drive growth.

Degrowth requires political suppression of consumption and production. To offset the massive income reductions this would entail for poorer populations, many degrowth experts argue that this decrease in production and consumption should be accompanied by wealth redistribution.

At first glance, that proposal looks reasonable — we can decrease emissions and inequality at the same time. But simultaneously reducing growth and redistributing resources is not so simple. Redistribution to lower income groups or populations who have a higher propensity to spend can actually increase household consumption, which all other things equal may in turn increase emissions.

Redistribution is a worthy goal, but on its own it will not decarbonize the economy. Some nuanced degrowth writing focuses loss prescriptions on wealthier residents within rich countries and rich countries overall. This is sensible, but it ignores the emissions that are likely to come with emerging market economy (EME) development in countries like India. It also ignores the recoil of investment in EMEs that would result from reductions in consumption and growth in wealthy countries, which would tend to bring excess capital back home to the richer countries.

Degrowth advocates might argue that these problems could be addressed through national and global planning regimes, which could (e.g.) restrain households from increasing consumption too much and force capital to invest more in poorer countries. But the kind of state planning required to mitigate emissions and regulate behavior while reducing overall production and consumption would need to be a globally coercive regime, with otherworldly institutional capacities and knowledge. Imagine the surveillance and punishment apparatuses needed to constantly monitor people around the world to enforce production and consumption quotas. Few would voluntarily agree to this system; governments now are not even following through on relatively modest climate accords. Maybe a sacrifice of democratic governance would be worth it, as some have argued. But even if an authoritarian regime of global planning were justified, what social forces would have the capacity to institute one?

To be clear, this isn’t an objection to planning per se. To address the climate crisis, we clearly need a big dose of democratic economic planning that prioritizes ecological goals over profit. But large-scale planning becomes both more technically and morally fraught when it involves forcing most of the world’s population to accept lower living standards.

Historically, industrial transformations have required growth, and relatively lower growth in the context of such transformations has led to horrific casualties (e.g., the Soviet Union’s creation of famine in Ukraine during its industrialization drive in the early 1930s). Lower growth means more trade-offs and losses in a transition, meaning that new capital formation comes at the cost of greater suppression of consumption and thus of living standards.

This is because the new capital needed to transition has to come from somewhere. It can come from reallocating resources from traditional growth sectors (e.g., from agriculture to industry) or from a rising tide of growth that can improve the living standards of the majority. Therefore, a global investment boom is necessary to pay for decarbonization — not a decline in investment, as many degrowth advocates claim.

3. Degrowth adopts unjustified assumptions from orthodox economics.

Degrowth has a lot in common with carbon-tax advocacy. Carbon-tax supporters, like degrowthers, have advocated decreases in consumption as the way to decarbonization.

This approach has not gone well historically. The French government imposed carbon taxes without offering adequate substitutes for citizens (such as affordable electric vehicless or sufficient public transportation options); as a result, living costs increased for lower-income households who spent larger shares of their budgets on energy, and eventually widespread social unrest resulted.

The truth is that a narrow emphasis on reducing consumption is deeply rooted in orthodox economics. An orthodox economics perspective would claim that we must decrease consumption to decrease emissions. This outlook tries to predict the future by holding variables in the present constant. It assumes that resources and worker productivity are always being maximized and also that energy unit costs will not decrease.

Those are false assumptions: resource utilization, productivity, and energy costs change a great deal. Resource utilization can become more efficient over time; think about how small computers have become since the 1980s thanks to increasingly powerful microchips. Productivity and efficiency constantly vary. Why else would firms share information and techniques with each other in order to improve themselves on those measures? And energy costs can also decrease — look at the recent collapse in the price of solar.

This means that decarbonization through decreased consumption may not be necessary. In fact, carrots (economic gains) have had more political success historically than sticks (economic losses) when implementing climate policies.

Decarbonization will likely require massive investment. By the most sophisticated measures, global decarbonization will cost roughly $4 trillion per annum, and some version of state-led green growth is probably our best route. Such investment on a smaller scale is already increasing the availability of carbon-free substitutes in the United States and China. Degrowthers often focus too much on economic suppression when we need to acknowledge that electrification, energy replacement, and economic justice may require one last economic boom.

4. Degrowth doesn’t have an adequate theory of political transformation.

From the radical social reorganization of the Paris Commune to the policy outcomes that followed the civil rights movement, historians and social scientists have studied the conditions that lead to successful political transformation. To explain movement strengths or weaknesses and predict or evaluate movement successes and failures, many scholars will plug a movement into what they call a “political opportunity structure.” A political opportunity structure has three components: (1) public consciousness, (2) organizational or mobilizing strength, and (3) macro political opportunities.

What is the political opportunity structure of the degrowth movement? Despite academic chatter, the degrowth movement is irrelevant to most people in the world. To get a pulse of public opinion, I compared Google searches of “degrowth” versus “how to get rich.”Google searches for “degrowth” versus “how to get rich.” Note: On y-axis, the value of 100 indicates peak popularity. Explore more here. The recent peak in “how to get rich” searches represents the Netflix release of a show under that name.

Not only do most people prioritize growth and prosperity over addressing climate change (as discussed throughout), but most people also do not know or care about degrowth. The degrowth movement fails in the arena of public consciousness in both opinion and salience.

Things look even more dire when examining other aspects of the movement’s political opportunity structure. There is no major social movement organization or institution centering degrowth in its platform. If such organizations do exist, they have feeble resources and networks, which are key ingredients for movement success. The civil rights movement, for instance, boasted black colleges, churches, and activist organizations (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality) tied together through strong networks and alliances. Degrowth has no natural constituency, and creating it would require a global-scale transformation of political consciousness.

Finally, the macro political conditions to support the movement are not present. There are no political regimes interested in advancing the movement. Not even the European Union, arguably the international bloc most committed to decarbonization right now, is interested in degrowth. At the “Beyond Growth” Conference, European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen stated, “A growth model centered on fossil fuels is simply obsolete” and called for “a different growth model that is sustainable far into the future.” She’s talking about green growth, not degrowth.

Furthermore, studies find again and again that democracies prioritize economic prosperity over real decarbonization. Economic growth can enhance people’s quality of life (barring wars, or the trend of wealth concentration outpacing growth that Thomas Piketty has documented). National governments are legitimized by growth, and when they fail to provide it, there are political consequences.

If economic stagnation often leads to explosions of anger at the status quo in wealthy countries, imagine how emerging market economies will deal with forced degrowth (those countries’ growth rates in the coming years are projected to dwarf those of advanced market economies). It is hard to believe that emerging economies will accept nondevelopment for the sake of climate goals. (No wonder social scientists in BRICS and non-OECD countries favor green growth over degrowth.)

Degrowthers might reasonably retort that proponents of green growth policies also lack the public consciousness, organizational or mobilizing strength, and macro political opportunities to win meaningful change. The difference is that the vast majority of society has an interest in an egalitarian green growth agenda along the lines of the Green New Deal, because they stand to benefit from a massive public investment in green jobs, infrastructure, and public transportation that would raise their standard of living. And organized workers in strategic sectors like electricity and auto have the structural leverage to win key climate demands.

In other words, the broader climate movement has a potential coalition with the interests and capacity to achieve its goals — but it still needs to be organized. That means a green growth program has a plausible potential “political opportunity structure,” unlike degrowth.

What’s at Stake?

Despite degrowth’s unclear prospects of achieving decarbonization and lack of a plausible popular constituency, many smart people have been distracted by it. Instead of trying to convince everyone that we need to fight economic growth, there are more immediate practical problems that those who want a green transition need to attend to. To name a few:Financing emerging market economies. EMEs cannot afford to abandon fossil fuels and fund the green transition with their own balance sheets.

Ending austerity in wealthy countries. Rich countries can afford decarbonization already. But they have been stymied by neoliberal ideologies and policy approaches that have prevented them from using the power of the state and public investment to transform their economies.

Compensating losers in the transition. Households with higher energy costs and workers and regions reliant on carbon-intensive industries will need support, in the form of welfare programs, job training, and so on as economies transition away from fossil fuels.
Critical mineral extraction. How can we harvest critical minerals to build green technologies without abusing labor and destroying ecosystems?

Using the power of “the big green state” to achieve a just transition. If private capital is in the driver’s seat for the green transition, there is the danger that public goods could be privatized, key goals could be sacrificed for quick profits, and inequality could worsen. And not all decarbonization is profitable. How do we do green planning to ensure a transition that serves the public rather than private interests?

Addressing geopolitical challenges. Some countries are either apathetic about climate change or have assets that are directly threatened by decarbonization (e.g., petrostates). How do we get them to decarbonize?

These are just a few of the critical problems we face moving forward with decarbonization. Limited time means we must place bets and prioritize solutions to them now. Degrowth may be an appealing idea for morally committed left academics and activists. But it is not a serious path forward for the climate.

This work has been made possible by the support of the Puffin Foundation.

Daniel Driscoll  is a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Starting fall 2024, he will be an assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Virginia.

The First Stegosaur Tracks in Scotland Were Just Discovered on This Windy Island
Mike McRae

Stand on the wind-swept crags lining Scotland's western coast today, and you'd be lucky to spot a puffin or two. But the closer we look, the more evidence we find it was once home to an incredibly diverse array of ancient beasts.© Warpaintcobra/istock/Getty Images Artist impression of a stegosaur

The discovery of new sets of fossilised tracks has expanded the list of potential dinosaur populations that roamed what is now the Isle of Skye. Among them are tracks left by an animal that would have belonged to one of the most famous plate-backed herbivore suborders, Stegosauria.

Scottish and Brazilian researchers have spent the past couple of years analysing two recently found tracksites at a spot on the island's north-eastern coast called Rubha nam Brathairean, or Brothers' Point.

"These new tracksites give us a much clearer picture of the dinosaurs that lived in Scotland 170 million years ago," says University of Edinburgh palaeontologist Stephen Brusatte.

Back then, the lands making up the British Isles were nothing like they are today. Jurassic Scotland sat far closer to the equator, roughly in alignment with where Greece is today. Warm seas and a sub-tropical climate established ecosystems that were bustling with life.

Still, just because it was a virtual paradise doesn't mean it's been perfect for preserving the remains of ancient life. The Jurassic isn't exactly fossil friendly as it is, but Scotland has always seemed especially thin on dinosaur tracks and bones.

In spite of a rich history of fossil hunting throughout much of the United Kingdom, the first clear traces of dinosaur wildlife in Scotland were finally uncovered in the early 1980s when palaeontologists John Hudson and Julian Andrews found the "unmistakable print from a large dinosaur" in a fallen limestone block at Brothers' Point.

Since then, a plethora of tracks belonging to a wide range of long-necked sauropods and fleet-footed theropods have been identified, turning the Isle of Skye into a landmark site for Jurassic researchers.

The most recent additions include teapot-sized holes that haven't been found elsewhere on the island – impressions that are described in palaeontological terms as belonging to a category called Deltapodus.


a close up of a sign: stegosaur footprints skye
© Provided by ScienceAlert
stegosaur footprints skye Deltapod tracks on Isle of Skye (dePolo et al., PLOS One, 2020)

"These discoveries are making Skye one of the best places in the world for understanding dinosaur evolution in the Middle Jurassic," says Brusatte.

Without a means of narrowing down the exact species of dinosaur responsible, the researchers are careful about jumping to any conclusions.

But it's fair to say that this group includes a type of cow-sized dinosaur famed for its lines of geometric plates adorning its spine, and a wicked clump of 'thagomising' spines on its tail.

The team also uncovered another potentially new addition to the list, in the form of large imprints of something with three stubby toes possibly belonging to a group of heavyweight herbivores called ornithopods.

"We knew there were giant long-necked sauropods and jeep-sized carnivores, but we can now add plate-backed stegosaurs to that roster, and maybe even primitive cousins of the duck-billed dinosaurs too," says Brusatte.

Not only do the tracks provide tantalising evidence that stegosaurs once trod along the muddy Scottish coastline, the age of the tracks provides some of the earliest evidence of this particular dinosaur's existence.

Only last year, a species of stegosaur was dug up in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. At an estimated age of around 168 million years old, the fossilised remains of Adratiklit boulahfa are officially the oldest of its kind.

These tracks at Brother's Point are closer to 170 million years old. While there's no way to confirm what kind of stegosaur might have left them behind, it does help establish timelines and distributions describing their evolution.

"In particular, Deltapodus tracks give good evidence that stegosaurs lived on Skye at this time," says the study's lead author, Paige dePolo from the University of Edinburgh.

With such a rich assortment of tracks being found across the island, this part of Scotland is representative of an important period in evolutionary history, where the late Jurassic's zoo of classic creatures was just beginning to develop their famous characteristics and spread out around the globe.

This research was published in PLOS One.